It was announced almost three weeks ago that Chris Pine, 39, will play Walter Cronkite in Newsflash, a real-time drama how the trusted CBS anchorman and various CBS staffers handled the incoming news of JFK’s assassination on 11.22.63. Pine will have to either gain weight or wear chubby-face makeup in order to resemble the 44 year-old Cronkite, who was rounder and older-looking on that day, even by the standards of the early ’60s, and not especially handsome.

But at least Pine will make for a better Cronkite than Seth Rogen would have…good God, that would’ve been terrible! Responsible parties (including director David Gordon Green) actually wanted Rogen to play the legendary newsman.

I’ve read a draft of Ben Jacoby‘s Newsflash script. I found it steady and convincing — smoothly written, well-researched, not brilliant but very decent. Cronkite is the stalwart, steady-at-the-tiller hero, of course. CBS honcho Jim Aubrey is the villain of the piece.

I don’t know when Newsflash will shoot (probably not for a while) but Pine will also portray former White House attorney and Watergate whistle-blower John Dean in an Amazon feature.

A script for the Dean film apparently hasn’t been written yet.

Variety‘s Matt Donnelly: The film will follow the life and political saga of Dean, who served as White House counsel for President Richard Nixon from July 1970 through April 1973.

The Dean film will probably turn out to be be a more interesting project than Newsflash, for the built-in dramatic conflict (i.e., a young believer in Nixon and the Republican cause experiences an agonizing re-appraisal when the Watergate shit hits the fan) if nothing else.

The Toronto Film Festival website is reporting that Katemir Balagov‘s Beanpole, which I reviewed three months ago in Cannes, is a North American premiere. Which, if accurate, would mean it won’t show first in Telluride. But it will do that. The correct TIFF designation, therefore, should be Canadian premiere. Beanpole‘s Rotten Tomatoes rating stands at 100%.

So in order to see Steven Soderbergh‘s Let Them All Talk sometime next fall, I’ll have to pay a subscription fee to HBO Max. Expected to launch sometime next spring. HBO Max will be a streaming service for all things Warner Media, right? HBO, Warner Bros. films and TV content, TCM, etc.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that WarnerMedia is mulling “a $16-to-$17-per-month price tag, which would be $2 more than a standalone HBO subscription and about $4 more than Netflix,” per qz.com.

I’ve been an HBO Now subscriber for three or four years, but management apparently wants me to follow HBO Max instead. I’m also being urged to subscribe to the forthcoming Apple TV and NBC-Universal streaming services also. No way would I ever consider becoming a Disney Channel subscriber.

Written by Deborah Eisenberg, Let Them All Talk is being described as some kind of older-woman’s relationship ensemble drama (Meryl Streep‘s noteworthy author + Candace Bergen and Dianne Weist. Lucas Hedges plays Streep’s nephew; he and Gemma Chan‘s character apparently get something going. Lensing began in NYC last week; it’s presently shooting aboard the QE2 during an actual voyage to England.

If you find this post rote and uninspired, you’re right — I agree with you.

I’m sorry but I’m sensing a fairly brittle vibe here. Tension, arched backs, porcupine needles. Par for the course for a series about a Today-like show, right? Maybe, but I really don’t want to watch this.

Boilerplate: “Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) runs The Morning Show, a popular news program that has excelled TV ratings and changed the face of American television forever. After her partner of 15 years, Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell), is fired amidst a sexual misconduct scandal, Alex fights to retain her job as top newsreader while sparking a rivalry with Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon), an aspiring journalist who seeks to take Alex’s place.

In an 8.12.19 riff about the teaser, it seemed as if Carell was going to play, as I put it, “some kind of pompous asshole, or perhaps a character based in part on Matt Lauer.”

Regional film critic: “Like that all-too-common shot of the hero (or villain) walking away from an explosion right behind him, there’s a relatively recent film cliche that’s annoying the hell out of me. I call it the ‘baring intimate secrets in front of a crowd of total strangers‘ scene.

“It occurs in Blinded By the Light when the protagonist reveals his relationship with his father in front of a school assembly. It’s in Rocketman when (if I remember correctly) Elton John tells a packed Wembley Stadium that he’s gay. It’s also in Crazy, Stupid, Love when Steve Carell bares his soul during his son’s eighth-grade graduation ceremony. Plus other soul-baring moments that I’m not recalling.

“No human has ever done anything like this. No. One. Ever. So when did screenwriters think crafting a scene like this makes dramatic sense? Can’t they think of a better way to wrap up a story?”

HE to regional film critic: “Good point. One of the main reasons that I hated Crazy Stupid Love, actually, was that climactic confession from Carell’s character. My blood boiled.

“But there’s one ’emotional confession befire strangers’ scene that definitely works, and I think the world agrees with me. It’s the second-to-last scene in Cameron Crowe‘s Jerry Maguire. (’96). An exhilarated Tom Cruise crashes Renee Zellweger‘s woman-support-group meeting and lays it all on the line, etc. For all I know this scene inspired other screenwriters to try and copy it.

“The thing that Crowe got right and others didn’t, of course, is that Cruise offered his confession in front of six or seven women in a living room, and not to thousands of fans in Wembley Stadium.”

Waldorf Astoria rooftop top chef: “Tomahawk steak should be $150 tops. We don’t want to push it.” Waldorf Astoria rooftop restaurant manager: “That’s why you’re the chef and I’m the manager.” Top chef: “What do you want to charge? $175? $200?” Manager: “No.” Top chef: “I know you want to charge $200. But that’s $50 more than the top steak houses.” Manager: “I’m going to charge $230.” Top chef: “Jesus.”

From Waldorf Astoria rooftop, looking east on little Santa Monica Blvd. — Sunday, 8.19, 9:20 pm.

The WordPress guys killed me earlier today. Like “Nately’s whore” in Mike Nichols‘ Catch 22, they approached from behind me as I waiting for a crosswalk light, and stabbed me in the ribs. And like Alan Arkin I grasped my side and moaned like a gored matador as I slowly crumpled to the ground.

All I know is that I was suddenly unable to post anything because all the usual doodahs (including the “save” button) has suddenly disappeared. Thanks, WordPress!

I tried fiddling around but nothing changed. I asked trusted homey Sasha Stone for help, but she was tied up on a freelance project. Panting and panicking, I turned to WP Tech Support, a British site. They charge $65 to fix emergencies. I gratefully forked over, and then crashed on the couch in order to escape my problems.

Received at 4:25 pm: “Great news, Jeffrey! The issue is fixed and your site is working perfectly now with Classic Editor (latest version of WordPress 5.2.2 but no Gutenburg). Your pages and posts can be edited/saved as normal now.

“The issue was related to an upgrade you made to Revolution Slider, or the latest 6.X version [which] is not compatible with WordPress 5.2.2, and so we have made some code level changes as suggested by Revolution Slider to fix the compatibility issue.”

An upgrade to Revolution Slider? At first I couldn’t recall what Revolution Slider is. What is that, like a slide rule? (That’s a joke — I was imitating to Hillary Clinton.)

I’m used to a certain “house”-style positivism when it comes to DVD Beaver reviews of Blurays. A certain regulatory stamp-of-approval. That’s a polite way of saying that no Bluray ever gets panned — not really. At worst you might occasionally detect a slight under-serving of enthusiasm, as evidenced by “fairly”, “slightly”, “decent” and “somewhat.”

Trust me — as someone who writes reviews a lot, I know what “decent” means.

Hence Colin Zavitz’s DVD Beaver review of Criterion’s Local Hero Bluray (out 9.24): “A fairly robust contrast helps the image during darker moments, though perhaps a 4K restoration could have been slightly more impressive. Colors seem to be faithfully represented, with a decent amount of clarity to the image, showing a somewhat detailed picture, though at times a little soft.”

On top of which Zavitz doesn’t even say if Criterion has adjusted the sound levels correctly so that Mark Knopfler‘s guitar doesn’t overwhelm that faint tinny sound of the jingling pay phone during the final shot — a concern that I mentioned a couple of months ago.

I was looking for a good scene from Ulee’s Gold, but I couldn’t find anything that I liked. It’s been 22 years; maybe it wasn’t as good as I recall.

I really love how Mindhunter 2 focuses almost entirely upon the Atlanta Child Murders investigation over the last…what, five episodes? And on the eventual discovery of likely child-murderer Wayne Williams, and how the guy who plays Williams (still searching for his name) looks almost exactly like him. Ditto the actors who play Charles Manson (Damon Herriman) and David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz (Oliver Cooper).

In the below video Holt McAllany (who plays Bill Tench) explains how and why the resemblance is so precise.

I was completely riveted and I may even re-watch for good measure, but there are two things I wasn’t especially transported by.

One was the subplot about Tench’s malignant son, Brian, who says exactly four words (“Did the fish die?”) in the whole series and is clearly destined to become some kind of super-fiend when he grows up. Nothing happens, nothing develops…the kid is just a zombie from the get-go. Brian is adopted but what a nightmare regardless, and there’s no way out of it for poor Bill and his wife Nancy (Stacey Roca).

The other “what?” is the serious attention paid to the love affair between Anna Torv‘s Wendy Carr and Lauren Glazier‘s Kay Mason, a foxy divorced bartender. Their relationship is not without intrigue and the performances struck me as exactly right, but the whole subplot is just an aromatic sideshow. It has nothing whatsoever to do with serial killers, interviewing serial killers, finding Wayne Williams or the BTK killer, FBI politics or the BSU. Takeaway: Workaholics and obsessives aren’t that great at relationships, etc.

Until I watched this clip, I’d never seen color-and-sound footage of Marlene Dietrich being interviewed. All my life she was this sparkling, glistening black-and-white figure, acting lines and presenting the classic Dietrich persona. Born in ’01, she was 70 when she sat for this interview. Nice makeup, great hair, the shape of her mouth, etc. Judgment at Nuremberg was her last substantial role. Her Christine Helm in Witness For The Prosecution might have been her most glamorous and charismatic. I never cared for her dark-haired gypsy in Touch of Evil.

I respect and admire the six films Dietrich made with Josef von Sternberg more than I actually like watching them. She was a tiny bit chubby in those films; I prefer the older, sleeker Dietrich of the late 40s and ’50s….the Dietrich who had a hot and heavy affair with Yul Brynner in the ’50s, and who also did the raunchy with Errol Flynn, George Bernard Shaw (really?), John F. Kennedy, Joe Kennedy, Michael Todd, Michael Wilding, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas and Frank Sinatra.